Rants & Reviews

14 October 2017

The Battle of the Sexes: Film Review

I am so sorry to report that I was disappointed in the film Battle of the Sexes, which I ran to see after so many FB friends raved about it. The Battle of the Sexes covers the historic 1973 match between a 55-year-old loud-mouthed hustler Bobby Riggs (Steve Carell) and the tennis champ Billie Jean King (Emma Stone). I was living in a feminist commune when this all came down and I remember 8 or 10 of us crowding on to the bed of the sister who had the TV in her room. Each volley, each point, each up and down elicited screams and cheers and curses from us. Life in those early days of women’s liberation was an intense and emotional time. Each “click” of consciousness about women as an oppressed group forced us to revise our individual histories (oh, so it wasn’t my fault I that the teacher groped me) and our view of the world. Sure the Battle was hyped. Sure it was a media event. But we longed for a victory, any victory, in those early days.

I am not one who subscribes to the Great (Wo)Man Theory. One woman did not change history. The social context was missing. The five-year-old women’s liberation movement and three-year-old lesbian liberation movement constituted the ground on which the women of tennis, led by Billie Jean King, could build their independent circuit and their struggle for equal purses. We’re in the ether of the film, but not quite in the film.

The young friend I saw the film with could hardly believe that Bobby Riggs really took such a carnival approach to life, but that was just as I remembered. Riggs was desperate for both money (he was a gambler) and attention, so he was always happy to get up in any bizarre costume for any sponsor that would pay him to do it. He was a walking circus and every event he touched – including this profound historic moment – was doused in his silliness.

Hindsight is all well and good, but the soft-focus delivery of King’s love affair with her hairdresser Marilyn Barnett (Andrea Riseborough) gave insufficient sense of how freaked out King was by her own sexuality, an agony for her over many years. Of course there’s no hint of how devastating the end of their relationship would be. In 1981 Marilyn sued in what was called a “palimony” case (pal as in chum as in friend as in there was no formal social recognition for same sex hookups), which outed Billie Jean King, causing her huge anxiety. We all desperately wanted her to come out much earlier, but tennis had to wait for Martina Navratilova to be out and proud in 1981.

King’s husband Larry King was played by Austin Stowell as a handsome, long-suffering, utterly supportive sweetie, despite being replaced in Billie Jean’s bed by her girlfriend. I don’t recall anything about their relationship, but wow he seemed too chill to be believed. Bobby Riggs’ posh wife Priscilla (Elisabeth Shue) dumped him over his gambling and foolery, but took him back, according to the film, once he was publicly humiliated by his loss to a woman. That seemed a bit odd as well.

Several bit roles are played by some fab actors. The entertaining Alan Cumming gets to camp it up in a decorative but small part, and Sarah Silverman does quite an interesting, believable job as a grown-up manager of the women’s tennis tour. I’m not generally a fan, but I loved her hair’s grey streaks and the solidity of her acting. With a straight face, Fred Armisen plays a crank healer shoveling herbs into Riggs. And Natalie Morales brings us Rosie Casals, who I remember with great affection as one of the earliest openly feminist sportswomen.

Friends posted that they cheered and wept, that it was just the film they hoped to see. I was generally unmoved – and this despite the intensity with which my collective and I experienced the match itself back in the day. What a high it was. What a victory. What a symbol. After all that belittling of women as athletes, it was orgasmic to watch Billie Jean thrash the professional chauvinist. Personally, I’m going to wait for some woman to make a documentary because this film was not strong enough to carry or deliver the impact of that momentous Battle.

Comments

I'm sorry, but this film sounds positively cringe-inducing. The whole point of sex-segregated sports is that, in general, men are larger and possess greater muscle mass than women, although naturally there is a wide crossover, and a highly skilled woman will of course beat a less skilful man unless brute strength is a factor. I'm obviously delighted BJK beat the braggart, but so what? It proves nothing, and it certainly didn't fix anything.

Filmmakers often take on serious and significant topics like this and then file off the edges of what actually happened to soften them. Maybe they think it makes them more acceptable to a mass audience. Think of how The Color Purple and Fried Green Tomatoes downplayed the lesbian relationships that sat at the core of the stories.